I Know What a Hotdish is, and I Approved This Message

One more day of political junk mail to recycle without reading. I read the first pamphlet. The hundredth one I’ve received in the past six months hasn’t said anything any more enlightening than the first one did.

One more day of thirty second television ads that range from the bizarre to the ridiculous to the darn right frightening.

One more day of 24 hour a day television coverage by “experts” and “surrogates” and “pundits” on cable news shows.

One more day of polls and Loud Talkers and electoral maps and Red states and Blue states.

One more day of noise.

Tomorrow, Americans will vote. In small towns and huge towns and all the towns in between. For Leaders. It’s not a perfect system, but compared to a lot of other systems throughout the world, it’s pretty darn good.

If you are breathing, and unless you have been comatose for the past year, you know that here, in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, you will also be asked to decide whether or not the word marriage will be defined as legal and valid only for couples composed of one man and one woman. It’s important to understand that voting No does not mean that marriage will suddenly become legal for same-sex partners in this state, people. It is about the definition of a word.

I’m a little bit surprised that Minnesota needs help with this. Our children are all above average, after all. We have dictionaries. I just checked mine.

Yeah. That’s pretty much what I thought the word meant. Thanks, Mr. Webster. Obviously, the word is, well….a word. It starts with a consonant and ends with a vowel and has eight letters. It’s a word that has been around and in use for centuries. It’s a noun. It means union. Between two people. Married couples define it every day in their own homes and lives by choosing to live together, work together, love one another. This is harder work for some couples than others. Some succeed. Some fail. This is because marriage isn’t easy. And because the marriages we sign up for when we are young and optimistic and madly in love are almost unrecognizable at other times throughout the course of our lives.

Life redefines marriage. Time redefines marriage. And anyone brave enough and optimistic enough and crazy enough to want to take this wild ride called Marriage with another person should, in my opinion, be allowed to stand in line, buy the ticket, get on the roller coaster, hold hands and scream their heads off. Religious beliefs and politics aside, I believe we are stronger as people when we do…and any children we choose to raise are generally happier when we do….and life is infinitely more interesting when we do… in any house or village or country or world. Or couple. At least, that’s what I think.

Marriage is a choice. If you’re lucky, the benefits outweigh the burdens. It’s an imperfect system, like democracy, but it allows most of us who make that choice to work at becoming part of a more perfect union every day.

When we begin to try to define this word as a verb, and when we begin to attribute our own very personal religious or social or sexual connotations to it, things get mighty complicated awfully fast. And in my opinion, it is not very Minnesota Nice to want to define it in rhetoric that divides us or determines, ultimately, which brave and foolish couples buy that ticket and make that decision to take that bumpy ride…holding onto each other for dear life.